Unusual pattern of chikungunya virus epidemic in the Americas, the Panamanian experience.

Background: Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) typically causes explosive epidemics of fever, rash and polyarthralgia after its introduction into naïve populations. Since its introduction in Panama in May of 2014, few autochthonous cases have been reported; most of them were found within limited outbreaks in Panama City in 2014 and Puerto Obaldia town, near the Caribbean border with Colombia in 2015. In order to confirm that Panama had few CHIKV cases compared with neighboring countries, we perform an epidemiological analysis of chikungunya cases reported from May 2014 to July 2015.